DoubleChecker

[Wickerford - Ryke] An eye for an eye

1. **Narrators Involved**
- DoubleChecker (wink-wink) Grade S Narrator

3. **Summary of the Roleplay**
- The group found a desperate letter asking for help in the village of Greybank. Someone is missing their daughter. A mysterious old figure approaches them, directing the group to a nearby village, Wickerford. After arriving at Wickerford, the group finds a weird atmosphere: villagers stare, and guards tell them to leave the village. They find Marra, running with her as guards try to stop them from helping. They meet again with the old man, Garreth, and they start having a better idea of what is going on: the lord of Wickerford is complicit in a series of long, ongoing kidnappings of the villagers by a group of bandits. The old man reveals himself to be a retired captain of the guard who was kicked out after deciding to oppose the whole scheme.
- The group starts to search for the bandit camp after eavesdropping on guards talking. They eventually stumble upon the camp itself, Marra's daughter being held in a cage. A fight ensues, Garreth becomes heavily wounded, and the girl is freed from the cage. The group runs away, being given chase by the bandits, numbers now greater as the ones who had been out on patrols join the chase. In the nick of time, a mysterious figure emerges from the shadows, allowing for the group to escape with Marra's daughter.
- Marra is reunited with her daughter; Garreth suggests the trio move to a village closer to the capital. The rescue was a success.

5. **Criminal Acts Perpetrated**
- None

6. **Lore to Establish**
- None

7. **Partial Participants**
- Rat (MJlol)
- Kind (deleted user)

9. **Full-Time Participants**
- Fredrick (discord.com/channels/5207614178892185…) - Scarce Rushdown - Standing Grade F
- Jilly (discord.com/channels/5207614178892185…) - SpoiledBread - Standing Grade F

10. **Characters with Point Boosters**
- None

12. **Assets/Titles Roleplayed For**
- Fredrick - Ryke Adventurer Guild F
- Jilly - Ryke Adventurer Guild F

13. **Characters with [Wanted]**
- None

14. Criminal Titles
- None

15. **Special Skills or Assets(downtime activities)**
- None

16. **Transactions Performed**
- None

18. **Character Sheet Oddities**
- None

19. **Aftermath **
- Now it comes to light, more publicly, what has been happening in Wickerford. Will those with the knowledge step up and ready themselves to nip the evil in the bud?

20. **Narrator Bonuses**
- None

21. **Additional Notes**
- None

[Wickerford - Ryke] An eye for an eye

Harrowfen Bridge settled slowly after the running stopped.

Marra clung to her daughter as though the act of holding her tightly enough might erase the hours between losing her and getting her back. The girl—Lysa, once Marra found breath enough to say her name aloud—held on just as hard, face buried in her mother’s shoulder, small body still shaking with the aftershock of fear. Neither seemed willing to let the other out of reach, not yet. Behind a bush whose cover was ruined by the very obvious jut of an oversized hat, Jilly watched in satisfied silence before bouncing back toward the others with the simple certainty of someone who knew helping had mattered. Fredrick, breathing hard and still looking more tired than triumphant, stayed near enough to Garreth to ask the question that needed asking.

Garreth did not answer immediately.

He took the candies Jilly offered him, turned one over in his palm as if he had not expected to be given anything so small and earnest after a fight like that, then let out a faint, tired breath that might have been the beginning of a laugh. “I’ll survive this one,” he said at last, though the hand pressed to his side made plain that survival and comfort were very different matters. His eyes shifted to Marra and Lysa, and whatever little humor had touched his face gave way to something firmer. “But they won’t survive Wickerford. Not after this.”

Marra lifted her head slowly.

Garreth nodded once, more to confirm what she already knew than to tell her anything new. “You, the girl, and me—we leave. Not tomorrow if it can be helped. Now. Greybank first, then closer to the capital. Somewhere the King’s law is still law, and not whatever bargain those cowards have made with fear.” His gaze hardened when it turned back toward the village in the distance. “That place is done with silence. Let it choke on it without you.”

The bridge held quiet around that decision. The marsh whispered below. Somewhere far back along the road, whatever became of the bandits and their pursuit no longer mattered enough to reach this moment. What remained was simpler, if not cleaner: a rescued child, a wounded old guard who had finally chosen a side he would not retreat from, and a knot of unlikely adventurers who had broken the pattern Wickerford had lived under for far too long. Jilly’s grateful wave toward the distant memory of “Sir Coin-sama” hung in the air with all the sincerity in the world, and even that absurdity felt right somehow, after everything.

For now, Harrowfen Bridge was no battlefield. It was only a place where people caught their breath, looked at what had been saved, and found room enough for whatever words still needed saying.

[Widersia] Big Dom’s Champion

Titles: Prime, Prime - Mundane - d1c24

The mustachioed man who shifted the air back at the alleyway stood beside the offered chair for a moment, looking back at the man who did the patting with a taunting grin before shifting his attention to Don Calabrese himself. "You have my deepest condolences, Big Dom, was it? Some trash really have no idea of the sanctity of a man's property." Another jab at the 'doorman' while being sincere to his employer.

Taking the offered seat, Hwicce leaned comfortably against the back of the chair, eyebrows raising when the pile of gabagool was 'offered'. "Don't mind if I do." With a flick of his wrist, the mercenary produced a [Concealed] dagger from his sleeve. He used the blade to skewer quite a few slices of the meat, bringing it to his lips and taking a hearty bite of it. "Pretty good." He mumbled, chewing, as he listened to the man's tale of misfortune.

Then he swallowed, skewering another pile of gabagool with his knife. "So, someone took your 'precious little commet." He looked at his companions; quite a few good questions were being put forth already. "Do you have any enemies bold enough to try something like this?" He waited a moment before taking a bite of the new pile of skewered meat. "I suppose you won't mind if we ask your men a few questions, right?

[Widersia] Big Dom’s Champion

The back entrance of La Stella Rossa did not look like the sort of place adventurers were meant to enter. The front of the restaurant was all polished glass, gold lettering, and velvet canopied prestige facing the bright avenues of the race district, where banners fluttered over packed streets and the distant roar of the track rolled through the city like surf. The alley behind it was another matter entirely. Narrow, shadowed, and smelling of rainwater, cigar smoke, and old brick. Two broad men in dark coats stood beneath the service lamp by the rear door, neither smiling, neither bothering to pretend they were mere doormen.

The moment the group was stopped, hands began checking belts, sleeves, boots, and under cloaks with all the delicacy of tax collectors. When those hands found leather armor and mustache before patience, the mustachioed man’s dry answer cut the tension sideways.

“Searching for something specific, or just enjoying the view? Because the second one costs extra.”

For one suspended second, the alley went tight. One goon’s brow twitched. The other set his jaw, clearly unsure whether to take offense or offense with interest. Then, from somewhere deeper inside the building, a voice erupted with enough force to hit the alley before the door even swung wider.

“Ya pair of numbskulls! Of course they came armed! I sent for adventurers, not choirboys! Get them in here before you embarrass me further!”

The goons stiffened at once. The door opened. Whatever argument had been about to happen died in the threshold.

Inside, the contrast was immediate. The service corridor gave way to dark paneling, amber light, thick carpet, and air so full of cigar smoke it looked almost layered. Framed racing photographs lined the walls. Winning finishes, trophies, crowds in ecstatic uproar, silk clad figures half caught in motion, but never quite enough at a glance to explain what was being raced, only that the city treated it like religion. They were ushered not to a dining room, but to a private chamber in the back. A broad booth, a scarred walnut table, heavy curtains drawn shut, and enough smoke hanging in the lamplight to turn the room sepia.

Don Domenico Calabrese

At the center of it all sat Don Domenico Calabrese. Big Dom to any soul with a survival instinct. He was enormous in the chair and somehow still looked cramped by it, thick fingers ringed in gold, cigar smoldering in one hand, the other hovering protectively near a plate piled high with gabagool as if it were both meal and emotional support. Two lieutenants stood behind him like furniture that might kill. A third lingered by the wall with his hands folded, watching in the patient way of men who broke things professionally.

Dom spread one hand toward the table in what may once have been hospitality and was now close enough to an order.

“Sit. Eat. Anybody says no to the gabagool, I’m taking it personal.”

He waited only long enough for that to land before the performance began in earnest.

“They took her.”

The words came low at first, disbelieving, like he still expected the room to correct itself. Then his face darkened. His nostrils flared. He leaned forward, one thick finger pressing into the tabletop as though he meant to pin the entire city under it.

“Out of her own stable. In my city. Two nights before the Derby.”

His palm came down flat. Hard enough to rattle the glasses, hard enough to make one of the lieutenants glance up.

“Do you understand what kind of insult that is? To me? To this family? To the sporting soul of this whole rotten town?”

The anger did not pass this time. It built. The cigar wagged sharply in his grip as he spoke, his breathing already starting to thicken with the effort of it.

“And I want a bullet in the back of the head of the bastard who thought he could disrespect me like this.”

By then Domenico was visibly getting wound up, voice climbing, chest rising heavier, the hand not holding the cigar opening and closing on the tablecloth like he might tear it clean off. One of the men behind him shifted half a step, less to calm him than to be ready for where the temper might go.

Then, just as suddenly, the fury collapsed inward into something more wounded. Dom leaned back, stared through the smoke toward one of the racing portraits on the wall, and exhaled through his nose like a man trying not to let strangers see too much.

“She’s a little high strung, sure. Temperamental. Legs worth more than half the district, and smarter than some people I keep employed.” His eyes cut sideways, briefly, toward his own men. “No offense.” The offense was clearly intended. Then his gaze returned to the adventurers. “But she’s my champion. My little comet. And somebody thought they could put hands on what’s mine.”

He jabbed the cigar through the haze, close enough to the party that the gesture felt almost like accusation.

“You are not taking this to the Guild. You are not asking stupid questions in crowded places. You are finding who took her, where they moved her, and you are bringing her back in one piece. No bruises, no broken bones, and nobody touches her legs unless they got a death wish or a medical license.” A breath.

On the wall behind him, a framed winner’s photograph had been turned slightly askew, enough to hide the face of the figure in it.

Dom’s expression hardened again.

“I want names. I want the truth. I want her back before morning turns this into odds. And when I get the son of a bitch responsible, I want him face down in the gutter with enough lead in him that the crows need a week to sort him out.”

[Wickerford - Ryke] An eye for an eye

The cage did not hold for long.

Jilly’s strange little body pressed against iron, and the metal gave way in the way only magic makes possible—not shattered outward in some grand display, but softened, warped, and ruined just enough that bars bent apart with a shriek of protest. For one frozen heartbeat, Marra’s daughter only stared. She was smaller than fear had made her in everyone’s minds, dirt-smudged, pale, and all sharp breaths and wide eyes. Then survival won over shock. Her hand shot out, caught Jilly’s, and the moment the opening was wide enough she slipped through it and ran.

That was all the camp needed to understand what had been lost.

Shouts broke loose at once. The woman by the tent did not scream orders; she only moved, one clipped command enough to send the rest into motion. Arrows hissed through the clearing, one biting into earth, another clipping leaves close enough to sound like tearing cloth. Fredrick crashed into the nearest threat not to win cleanly, but to buy time, forcing bodies to slow, turn, and react around him rather than after the fleeing girl. Garreth, breathing hard now and holding his wounded side tighter than before, took that small, precious opening and ran with the rest. It was not pretty. It was not orderly. It was the ragged, desperate kind of escape that only works because people commit to it before they can think better of it.

Branches whipped at shoulders. Roots threatened ankles. Behind them, the bandits came on in force now, no longer a camp but a hunt. Their boots pounded the logging path, their voices carrying between the trees in bursts of anger and direction. Once, twice, another arrow sliced past close enough to be felt rather than seen. For a stretch of heartbeats it seemed obvious how this would end: the wounded old guard would slow first, the child would stumble, the distance would close, and all the violence they had barely escaped would crash down at their backs.

Then the pursuit hit something it had not expected.

????

A man stood in the middle of the path ahead as if he had arranged the forest itself for his entrance. His armor was absurdly polished, blue and gold catching what little light made it through the canopy; a red scarf swept at his shoulders with all the dignity of a stage curtain. Sparkles seemed almost offended not to gather around him. His face was ridiculous in a way that demanded attention, his posture worse, chin tipped high with the confidence of a man who had never once doubted that the world improved by seeing him. He lifted one gauntleted hand, inspected its gleam with grave personal interest, and only then turned his head enough to acknowledge the chaos rushing toward him.

“Oh, honestly,” came his voice—thin, nasal, and unbearably self-satisfied, as though he had been interrupted while admiring his own reflection in a spoon. “Must I truly do everything myself? Go on, then. Run along. Try not to collapse before the bridge. I would hate for this rescue to look untidy.”

He did not look worried. He did not even look hurried.

The bandits did.

Steel rang behind them not long after, followed by the sound of men realizing too late that they had run into something far beyond the sort of prey they were used to chasing. Whatever that man did on that path, he did it without needing thanks and with every expectation that he deserved it.

By the time the bridge came into view again, the world had narrowed to breath, pain, mud, and relief. Marra was already there, having lived every second of the escape in dread of seeing only half the people return. When her daughter appeared through the reeds, that dread broke. She did not call out first. She simply moved—stumbling, then running, then dropping to her knees to catch the girl in both arms as if brute force might somehow make up for the hours of helplessness that had come before. The child clung back just as fiercely.

Harrowfen Bridge held the moment in stillness. Marsh water whispered below. Garreth stayed standing only because pride and habit were doing the work his body no longer wished to do. The road behind remained open, the sounds of pursuit gone distant or broken.

For now, the girl was safe. The mother had her child back. And in the quiet that followed the running and the fear and the clash of steel, there was finally room enough for whatever words came next.

[Aslan - The Grand Duchy] The Starry Entrance

The chamber answered experiment before it answered theory. When Sa'Saori brought the enchanted tip of her blade against the floating crystal, a clear note rang out through the room, high and pure as struck glass. The prism did not stop, yet its rotation shivered for the span of a breath, and the beams spilling from it jumped across the mirrors in a new pattern before settling again. Touching the mirrored panels with the same enchanted steel proved more revealing. Most remained cool and firm, but one gave a faint ripple beneath the blade as though its surface were only pretending to be solid. Another swallowed the reflected glimmer for an instant instead of casting it onward.

As Ichabod moved the perimeter with lantern in hand, the structure of the trial began to show itself. This was no random scattering of light. There was intent in it. Some mirrors reflected true, some bent the angles unnaturally, and at least one seemed meant to interrupt or consume a beam rather than continue it. The sealed archway opposite them remained the clearest destination, especially the interlocking crystal plates set above its frame, where faint lines could now be seen resting dormant like an incomplete sigil. His reading of the chamber aligned with what the room itself was quietly suggesting: this was a test of routing, discernment, and false appearances.

Alicia's gravity reached for the central prism next. Under the pressure of her spell and the warded resistance woven into the chamber, the crystal did not yield fully, but its turning did shift. For a few moments its horizontal drift tightened into a cleaner axis, and one narrow beam sharpened enough to strike the wall beside the door. There, a single silver rune lit violet, then faded when the prism's motion slipped back out of alignment. High above, unnoticed by most, the shadows of the observation gallery remained still.

Near the wall, Adelhein watched in silence, arms crossed, letting the newcomers find the shape of the first answer for themselves.

[Aslan - The Grand Duchy] The Starry Entrance

Equipped Titles: [Isekai], [Human], [Adept Magus], [Ethereal Luminary Academy Student] F, [Magno Sapiente Victori - Grand Magus S] E, Narrative Booster [Arcane Seeker] S, Connected [House Ashford] F, [El-Melloi's Scion] - 0054a6

When they stepped into the glass-like chamber, Adelhein spent a singular moment looking at the central crystal. Crimson eyes wandered along its edges, catching how it redirected light across the room. "Hmmm." He murmured before turning his attention elsewhere. After all, as Roffimières had put it, he was not there to help them with the test. His duties lay elsewhere.

"Well put. Let's see you and your comrades fare on the first test." Saying so to Sa'Saori, he walked to one of the walls of the chambers. His gaze was locked on the mirrored panel, appraising it for any strangeness. When he was satisfied, he turned around, watching the three participants work on the puzzle with crossed arms.

[Aslan - The Grand Duchy] The Starry Entrance

A low murmur had begun to spread across the Grand Induction Hall as the newly formed cohorts turned inward, voices rising in cautious conversation, introductions overlapping in a quiet swell of anticipation. Light from the great crystal above continued its slow, measured rotation, casting drifting constellations across the gathered candidates as they spoke among themselves.

It did not last.

A single, clear chime rang through the chamber.

The sound was soft, yet absolute. Conversations faltered, then stilled entirely.

Proctor Roffimières

Roffimières had not raised his voice, yet attention returned to him all the same.

“The examination will begin immediately.”

There was no flourish to the announcement. No pause for final preparation.

The crystal at his side brightened, and the sigils beneath the candidates’ feet stirred in unison, their slow drift quickening into deliberate motion.

“Cohorts will be transferred directly into the Astral Vestibule. You will remain within your assigned groups. Proceed with clarity.”

For the briefest moment, as the light began to gather around the platform, something shifted high above.

Among the upper balconies, where shadow pooled between the observation galleries, a figure stood where no one had stood before. Draped in dark, indistinct layers, her presence did not interrupt the light so much as absorb it. She did not move. She did not speak. Yet her attention was unmistakably fixed below.

???

Then the light surged.

Space folded without violence, the marble floor dissolving into threads of pale brilliance that wrapped around each candidate in turn. The Grand Hall vanished in a breath.

When sensation returned, it did so gently.

The Magenta group found themselves standing upon a wide circular platform of translucent crystal, suspended within a vast, open expanse. There was no sky, no ceiling, only a deep, quiet void filled with drifting motes of light that moved like distant stars caught in slow current.

Ahead, a broad archway stood embedded in a curved wall of polished crystal.

Beyond it lay the first chamber.

Stepping through, the space opened into a grand circular hall, its scale immediately apparent. The floor gleamed beneath their feet, smooth and glasslike, faint veins of light tracing delicate patterns through its surface. Along the walls, tall mirrored panels stood in careful arrangement, each framed in fine silver sigils that pulsed faintly in time with the ambient hum of the room.

At the center, suspended in the air, a large prismatic crystal turned slowly upon its axis. Its soft light scattered outward in shifting beams, catching across the mirrors and breaking into countless refracted strands that danced across the chamber.

Opposite the entrance, a sealed archway of interlocking crystal plates stood silent and unmoving.

Nothing stirred. Nothing threatened.

The room was calm. Beautiful.

And waiting.

[Aslan - The Grand Duchy] The Starry Entrance

Equipped Titles: [Isekai], [Human], [Adept Magus], [Ethereal Luminary Academy Student] F, [Magno Sapiente Victori - Grand Magus S] E, Narrative Booster [Arcane Seeker] S, Connected [House Ashford] F, [El-Melloi's Scion] - 0054a6

"Church of Flames, you say?" Adelhein repeated the title, the intonation of the word 'Church' so thick that it almost seemed like it had left a bad taste on his lips. "I forget how religion can be intertwined so closely to magecraft here. Still, it is always good to meet a peer of a noteworthy house, Sa'Saori, and you are much different from the elf who accompanied me for some time. Excellent." He didn't elaborate further.

When it was Ichabod who introduced himself, mentioning being practically the opposite of Sa'Saori and Adelhein himself: no status and self-taught, the youth said nothing. However, his attention had been sequestered by the signet ring on his index finger. He rubbed against his coat to give it a better polish a few times, an impassive expression present on his face.

The lack of address from Alicia seemed to have been noticed and filed away. But not before his crimson gaze fell on her, stony and unblinking, for seconds that seemed to stretch. "It is time." He said, both hands on his back.

[Wickerford - Ryke] An eye for an eye

The archer at G4 looses first, trying to punish Fredrick before he can reach the center. The shot comes fast and flat through the clearing—but Fredrick is already moving, red hair flashing as he slips the line of fire by a fraction. The arrow hisses past where his ribs had been and vanishes into the brush behind him.

He does not slow. He drives straight for the knot around Garreth, shoulder low, strength gathered for a brutal breakthrough. But the two melee bandits are ready for him. The one at J9 takes the hit just enough to spoil its angle, boots skidding in the dirt instead of being bowled clean through, while the one at J10 steps into the opening that failed to form. Steel flashes. Garreth catches one strike, turns another—and still takes a hard slash across his already battered side. The old captain stumbles half a step, breath breaking sharply, posture tightening around pain. He is still standing, still dangerous, but now visibly laboring for every breath.

At the cage, Jilly’s answer is stranger and far more effective. She swells her cheeks into a wobbling blue shield just as the bandit at G13 hacks down at her. The weapon sinks in, slows, and begins to melt into sticky gum-colored jelly in his own hands. He stares for one fatal second, overcommits, and his momentum carries him forward. He smashes shoulder-first into the cage gate at G14, rebounds off the bars, and crumples in a groaning heap at Jilly’s feet—disarmed, dazed, and out of the fight.

For the first time, the path to the girl is open.

And from near the central tent, the woman in dark wool watches it happen without panic, one hand resting near the hilt of her plain saber. Garreth is badly hurt. The cage is within reach. The camp’s leader is now fully in the open.